Revised Common Lectionary (Complementary)

Psalm 139

To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David.

¹ O Lord, you have searched me [thoroughly] and have known me.

² You know my downsitting and my uprising; You understand my thought afar off.^(A)

³ You sift and search out my path and my lying down, and You are acquainted with all my ways.

⁴ For there is not a word in my tongue [still unuttered], but, behold, O Lord, You know it altogether.^(B)

⁵ You have beset me and shut me in—behind and before, and You have laid Your hand upon me.

⁶ Your [infinite] knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high above me, I cannot reach it.

⁷ Where could I go from Your Spirit? Or where could I flee from Your presence?

⁸ If I ascend up into heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol (the place of the dead), behold, You are there.^(C)

⁹ If I take the wings of the morning or dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

¹⁰ Even there shall Your hand lead me, and Your right hand shall hold me.

¹¹ If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me and the night shall be [the only] light about me,

¹² Even the darkness hides nothing from You, but the night shines as the day; the darkness and the light are both alike to You.^(D)

¹³ For You did form my inward parts; You did knit me together in my mother’s womb.

¹⁴ I will confess and praise You for You are fearful and wonderful and for the awful wonder of my birth! Wonderful are Your works, and that my inner self knows right well.

¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from You when I was being formed in secret [and] intricately and curiously wrought [as if embroidered with various colors] in the depths of the earth [a region of darkness and mystery].

¹⁶ Your eyes saw my unformed substance, and in Your book all the days [of my life] were written before ever they took shape, when as yet there was none of them.

¹⁷ How precious and weighty also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them!^(E)

¹⁸ If I could count them, they would be more in number than the sand. When I awoke, [could I count to the end] I would still be with You.

²¹ Joash was seven years old when he began to reign.

12 In the seventh year of Jehu, ^[a]Joash began to reign, and he reigned forty years in Jerusalem. His mother was Zibiah of Beersheba.

² Joash did right in the sight of the Lord all his days in which Jehoiada the priest instructed him.

³ Yet the high places were not taken away; the people still sacrificed and burned incense in the high places.

⁴ And Joash said to the priests, All the current money brought into the house of the Lord to provide the dedicated things, also the money [which the priests by command have] assessed on all those bound by vows, also all the money that it comes into any man’s heart voluntarily to bring into the house of the Lord,

⁵ Let the priests solicit and receive such contributions, every man from his acquaintance, and let them repair the Lord’s house wherever any such need may be found.

⁶ But in the twenty-third year of King Joash’s reign the priests had not made the needed repairs on the Lord’s house.

⁷ Then King Joash called for Jehoiada the priest and the other priests and said to them, Why are you not repairing the [Lord’s] house? Do not take any more money from your acquaintances, but turn it all over for the repair of the house. [You are no longer responsible for this work. I will take it into my own hands.]

⁸ And the priests consented to receive no more money from the people, nor to repair the breaches of the house.

⁹ Then Jehoiada the priest took a chest and bored a hole in the lid of it and set it beside the altar on the right side as one entered the house of the Lord; and the priests who guarded the door put in the chest all the money that was brought into the house of the Lord.

¹⁰ And whenever they saw that there was much money in the chest, the king’s scribe and the high priest came up and counted the money that was found in the house of the Lord and tied it up in bags.

¹¹ Then they gave the money, when it was weighed, into the hands of those who were doing the work, who had the oversight of the house of the Lord; and they paid it out to the carpenters and builders who worked on the house of the Lord

¹² And to the masons and stonecutters, and to buy timber and hewn stone for making the repairs on the house of the Lord, and for all that was outlay for repairing the house.

¹³ However, there were not made for the house of the Lord basins of silver, snuffers, bowls, trumpets, any vessels of gold or of silver, from the money that was brought into the house of the Lord.

¹⁴ But they gave that to the workmen, and repaired with it the house of the Lord.

¹⁵ Moreover, they did not require an accounting from the men into whose hands they delivered the money to be paid to the workmen, for they dealt faithfully.

¹⁶ The money from the guilt offerings and sin offerings was not brought into the house of the Lord; it was the priests’.

5 Come now, you rich [people], weep aloud and lament over the miseries (the woes) that are surely coming upon you.

² Your abundant wealth has rotted and is ruined, and your [many] garments have become moth-eaten.

³ Your gold and silver are completely rusted through, and their rust will be testimony against you and it will devour your flesh as if it were fire. You have heaped together treasure for the last days.

⁴ [But] look! [Here are] the wages that you have withheld by fraud from the laborers who have reaped your fields, crying out [for vengeance]; and the cries of the harvesters have come to the ears of the Lord of hosts.

⁵ [Here] on earth you have abandoned yourselves to soft (prodigal) living and to [the pleasures of] self-indulgence and self-gratification. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.

⁶ You have condemned and have murdered the righteous (innocent man), [while] he offers no resistance to you.